François Crépeau

François Crépeau is Full Professor and the Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, at the Faculty of Law of McGill University, as well as the Director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.

From 2011 to 2017, he was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants. In this capacity, he has conducted official visits to Albania, Tunisia, Turkey, Italy (two times), Greece (two times), Qatar, Sri Lanka, Malta, the European institutions in Brussels and Vienna (several times), Angola, Australia and Nauru. He has also produced several thematic reports: the detention of migrants, the protection of migrants’ rights at the external borders of the European Union (two times), climate change and migration, global migration governance (three times), labour exploitation of migrants, labour recruitment practices, trade agreements and migration. He was the Chair of the Coordination Committee of the United Nations Human Rights Procedures (2014-2015).

François Crépeau is the 2017-2018 International Francqui Professor, at the invitation of a group of Belgian universities (Université Catholique de Louvain, University of Gent, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, University of Antwerp, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Université de Liège, Université Saint-Louis de Bruxelles). He was the 2016-2017 Robert F. Drinan S.J. Visiting Professor of Human Rights Chair, at the Georgetown University Law Center, in Washington (DC). He has been a guest professor at: Université Catholique de Louvain (every year since 2010), GraduateInstitute for International & Development Studies (Geneva, 2007), Institut des hautes études internationales de l’Université de Paris II (2002), Université d’Auvergne-Clermont 1 (1997).

From 2001 to 2008, François Crépeau was a professor at the Université de Montréal, where he held of the Canada Research Chair in International Migration Law, and was the founding scientific director of the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de l’Université de Montréal (CÉRIUM). From 1990 to 2001, he was a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Until 2011, François Crépeau was a member of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO and sat on the Barreau du Quebec’s Committee on Human Rights and Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. He also served as vice-president of the Canadian Human Rights Foundation (now Equitas) (1992-2004) and director of the Revue québécoise de droit international (1996-2004). He participated in observer missions in the occupied Palestinian territories (2002) and in El Salvador (1991).

François Crépeau holds diplomas from McGill University (BCL and LLB), Bordeaux University (DEUG and Licence in law, Master’s in private law), Paris II University (DEA in legal sociology) and Paris I University (Ph.D. in law).

François Crépeau is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and an Advocatus Emeritus of the Quebec Bar Association.